In order to safeguard their Premier League survival, Queens Park Rangers will
need to achieve what 17 out of the 18 teams who have visited the Etihad
Stadium in the league this season have not.

Only by avoiding defeat to Manchester City can they be sure of staying ahead of Bolton Wanderers and clinging on to the coat-tails of the elite.

But who better to carry out this daring raid than one of the architects of the Eastlands empire? As Mark Hughes tried to describe the prospect of returning to the club that sacked him two years ago, there remained a genuine note of hurt in his voice. The scars still sting, masked only by the bittersweet irony of having his former employers’ title dreams in his clutches.

Not that this is a revenge mission. “People keep throwing that word up,”Hughes said. “But it is not in my mind at all.”

Instead, he urged his team to prey on City’s fear of failure, shred their fragile nerves and crash their championship party.

“We’ve got to try and get in a position where we can get those emotions and those doubts and those feelings of apprehension flowing through them,” Hughes said.

“You do that by being in a position where you can still upset the party and stop the streamers being thrown. Get ourselves in that position, and who knows?

“City fans have had years of being disappointed. If we can get into a situation where our future is still in our own hands then maybe, just maybe, City might get nervous. Over the years, if something can go wrong it undoubtedly will go wrong to City. That's something City fans have dealt with over many, many years.”

As a member of the Manchester United squad that finally ended the club’s title drought in 1993, Hughes knows how hard it is to take that final stride.

He explained: “They’ve got good players who have won championships, but they haven’t won it as a group. If we can frustrate, and play on the little bit of apprehension that undoubtedly they’ll have – and even if the players don’t have it, the crowd will – we’ve got to try and play on those emotions.”

A proud man with a high regard for his own ability, Hughes stopped short of taking credit for City’s recent successes, but defended his record at the club.

“I came in when Man City were basically a mid-table Premier League team,” he said. “We got to a point where I felt we were on the cusp of something really special, and then for whatever reason I wasn’t given the opportunity. They felt that I wasn’t the right guy to take them forward. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that I was, but it doesn’t matter now.”

If this was an attempt to pile the pressure on City, there is plenty to go round. Relegation for QPR would undo the toil of two seasons, plunging Hughes’s future and the financial health of the club into uncertainty.

Yesterday Lakshmi Mittal, the richest man in Britain and owner of a third of Queens Park Rangers, said he was unsure whether he would retain his stake in the club if they were relegated.

Mittal, the second biggest shareholder at the club after chairman Tony Fernandes, told The Telegraph: “It would be a big disappointment. It does matter, I want to be in the Premier League.” Asked if he would consider selling his stake in the club if they were demoted, he replied: “I don't know. I haven't thought about this.”

This is a situation Hughes would prefer to have avoided. “I would have hoped that we wouldn’t have been in this position because when I came into the job and saw the fixtures that lay ahead, we were hoping nothing would be riding on this game,” he said. “It’s the wrong scenario, really, but we are where we are. So let’s go for it.

“It’s in our own hands. We can affect our own destiny. It’s going to be a big ask, but in the end we may well have to hope somebody else does us a favour.”

That somebody else would be Stoke City. Bolton need to win at the Britannia Stadium and hope that City fulfil their end of the deal. “With Manchester City having a chance to win the title in front of their own fans, there won't be many people betting against them,” a hopeful Owen Coyle said.